Field
This disclosure is generally related to distribution of digital content. More specifically, this disclosure is related to a system that allows a requesting network element to query or negotiate with a responding network element for optimal transport parameters based on historical network information.
Related Art
The proliferation of the Internet and e-commerce continues to create a vast amount of digital content. Content centric network (CCN) architectures have been designed to facilitate accessing and processing such digital content. A CCN includes entities, or nodes, such as network clients, forwarders (e.g., routers), and content producers, which communicate with each other by sending interest packets for various content items and receiving content object packets in return. CCN interests and content objects are identified by their unique names, which are typically hierarchically structured variable length identifiers (HSVLI). An HSVLI can include contiguous name components ordered from a most general level to a most specific level. A CCN name prefix, or namespace, may include one or more contiguous name components beginning from the most general level.
Some transport protocols implement flow and congestion control by maintaining a window of messages (e.g., packets) sent from a client (e.g, a consumer) to a server (e.g., a content producer). Upon sending a packet, the consumer adds a packet to the window, and upon receiving a responsive packet, the consumer removes a packet from the window. For a window with a size of “w,” only w messages can be outstanding at any given time. Some transport protocols (such as TCP) use a sliding window such that w is a variable that changes dynamically based on network conditions. For example, if the protocol determines congestion, e.g., due to heavy traffic of neighboring nodes, the consumer can decrease w so that fewer messages are sent to the network. Similarly, if the protocol determines that the network is not congested, the consumer can increase w so that more messages can be sent for better throughput and latency performance.
While a CCN brings many desired features to a network, some issues remain unsolved with enabling a CCN transport protocol which results in optimal convergence to minimize congestion, by allowing system users to query the network for optimal transport parameters.